Rangewide Genetic Variation in Coast Redwood Populations at a Chloroplast Microsatellite Locus
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Old growth and second growth populations of coast redwood (Sequoia sempervirens) were sampled at 10 locations throughout its range and analyzed at a highly variable chloroplast microsatellite locus. Very low FST values indicated that there was no significant genetic differentiation between adjacent old growth and second growth populations at each location. Genetic diversity was moderate to high in populations north of the San Francisco Bay but low to very low in more southerly populations. Phylogenetic analysis produced a neighbor-joining tree with one clade composed of all populations north of San Francisco Bay and the other composed of the remaining southern populations. Differentiation of these two groups is consistent with the loss of rare alleles in the smaller, more fragmented southern populations by genetic drift.